Havoc from hurricane comes early to Houston's freeways

From staff and wire reports |
September 22, 2005

Sixteen hours to San Antonio and Dallas. Eleven hours to Austin. With over a million people trying to flee vulnerable parts of the Houston area, Hurricane Rita will be a nightmare even if Galveston doesn't take a direct hit. .

Trying to leave Houston on I-10, Ella Corder drove 15 hours to go just 13 miles today. Noticing cars out of gas littering the freeway, she turned off her air-conditioner to save fuel, but the 52-year-old heart patient worried the heat and exhaustion were taking a toll on her.

"All I want to do is go home," she said tearfully by cell phone. "Can't anyone get me out of here? "

Other evacuees' frustration turned into anger as the day wore on.

"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Julie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. "They say we've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn't prove it by me."

When all lanes of I-45 became outbound lanes north of Conroe early this afternoon, traffic immediately sped up. Like grocery shoppers jockeying for the fastest-moving checkout lines, northbound drivers were criss-crossing the freeway median in search of faster-moving lanes.

Drivers weren't willing to wait for the same to happen on I-10. Near Sealy, a stream of motorists who heard of the plan on their radios pulled into the inbound lanes and drove off. Their impromptu traffic management plan raised everyone's average speed from stop and go to 55 mph. At least for a while.

Travelers reported that occasional stretches of freeways flowing almost briskly around the area would inexplicably turn into parking lots as the day dragged on.

Where traffic came to a halt, fathers and sons got out of their cars and played catch on freeway medians. Others stood next to their cars, videotaping the scene, or walked between vehicles, chatting with people along the way. Tow trucks tried to wend their way along the shoulders, pulling stalled cars out of the way. People laid down for naps in parking lots.

An elderly woman caught in a traffic jam in Fort Bend County died, apparently from the heat. Katy police, meanwhile, arrested a woman they said lost her cool on the freeway and assaulted another woman, who may have suffered a broken arm.

While some motorists had no problem finding gasoline, others reported going from station to station in search of fuel, and police officers along the highways were carrying gasoline to help people get out of town. Refineries in Houston stopped pumping gasoline and diesel into delivery trucks last night so they could prepare for the hurricane themselves, according to Houston's largest distributor, Sun Coast Resources.

It took Tiffany Heikkila 11 hours to drive with her 5-year-old son from Sugar Land to Austin. She left at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and saw gas station lines backed up all the way to the exit ramps. Motel parking lots were packed, too.

"All along the way, cars were pulled off on the shoulder with drivers sleeping. They had their doors open with one foot hanging out of the car.."

Gary and Sunni Markowitz left Bellaire at 5:30 a.m. today but after six hours were only 20 miles into their trip to Austin.

With three children and a nanny in tow, they had run through three DVDs and all the snacks in the minivan. Their two-year-old was crying. A friend who was following them in another car with two children had already turned around for home, and they were seriously thinking about it themselves.

Countless others regretted their decision to leave. After nearly 14 hours on the road with her husband, two sons and dog, and nowhere near their destination of Paris, Chava Buse was ready to return to their Sugar Land home. They family stopped at five gas stations in a futile search for fuel before finding long lines and flaring tempers as people waited in the scorching heat to pay.

"I'd rather get hit by a hurricane,'' said a frustrated Buse this afternoon as she sat in her extended cab pickup truck at a crowded Shell station at Texas 242 and I-45 in The Woodlands. "I told my husband five times, let's turn back.''

"This has been so trying,'' she said. "It was fun at first. People were having picnics along the highway. Now it's getting old . . . I'm running on adrenalin.

Sarah Granbery made the decision to give it up relatively early on. The Rice Village resident had forced herself up early to head for a friend's home in Nacogdoches at 6 a.m. She had a full tank of gas, but less patience for the parking lot that was U.S. 59 North.

When she hit the Crosstimbers exit, she gave up and headed back.

"I guess we should have left Monday,'' she said.

Those able to get out of town were encountering yet another headache today: Hotels hours inland were filling up quickly, all the way to the Oklahoma and Arkansas line.

John Decker, 47, decided to board up his home and hunker down because he could not find a hotel room.

"I've been calling since yesterday morning all the way up to about 1 this morning. No vacancies anywhere,'' he said. "I checked all the way from here to Del Rio to Eagle Pass. I called as far as Lufkin, San Marcos, San Angelo. The only place I didn't call was El Paso. By the time you reach El Paso, it's almost time to turn back.''

Some travelers without hotel reservations, however, discovered sudden vacancies made possible only because others gave up evacuation plans out of frustration.

Rene Alaniz of Katy counted herself lucky because her family's journey to Austin from Katy took only 10 hours, often on dirt roads, and ended at at a Holiday Inn with unexpected vacancies.

New Orleans native Janice Armstrong, an evacuee of Hurricane Katrina, had worse luck. Again. She was turned out of her downtown Houston motel this afternoon. Motel workers shut the building on West Dallas, saying it's too likely to flood.

The decision leaves Armstrong, who lived at the George R. Brown Center for more than two weeks after fleeing Katrina, homeless again. The 45-year-old teaching assistant struggled this afternoon to find a cab to take her to the south Houston apartment where one of her daughters and two of her grandchildren have been staying.

"This is a mess,'' said Armstrong.

Along the Gulf Coast, federal, state and local officials tried to heed the bitter lessons of Katrina: better safe than sorry. Hundreds of buses were dispatched to evacuate the poor. Hospital and nursing home patients were cleared out. And truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and rescue and medical teams were put on standb

Noting that the traffic jams at least show residents are heeding the call to evacuate, Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said today it's not too late to leave.

"Don't follow the example of Katrina and wait,'' Eckels said. "During the storm, we will not be able to get to you."

Some are already saying, however, that the evacuation didn't have to be this bad.

"Why wasn't TxDot on the same page?" he asked. "Yesterday morning that should have been part of the plan

Unlike Kahn, some evacuees were blaming Houston's mayor.

Margaret Searle Robert and her family gave up on their effort to evacuate to Fort Worth today after spending all morning on I-45. She said her family will reluctantly ride out the storm in their historic 85-year old home in the Eastwood neighborhood near downtown Houston.

"We spent six hours trying to go from downtown to Richey Road. Six hours -- that's called 'Shame on you Mayor Bill White,''' Robert said.

Officials in coastal counties south of Houston were questioning why Houston called for such an early mandatory evacuation of its residents in Clear Lake and east side neighborhoods along the Ship Channel. By beginning evacuations on Wednesday, said Brazoria County Judge John Willy, more vulnerable coastal residents were prevented from making a quick exodus through Houston and to their shelters further inland.

Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert criticized the state government after the county recorded its first evacuation-related casualty. Hebert said the county's fuel stocks have been reduced by half because so many of its emergency vehicles are on the road.

"The state refuses to help us to get any fuel, so we can't help get the folks off the road," he said. "So I'm afraid we are going to have more people die in their car,'' he said.

Noting that the clogged roads at least mean that people are heeding the call to evacuate, Eckels said he recognized the frustration of evacuee traffic stacked bumper-to-bumper for up to 100 miles north of Houston this morning before the inbound lanes were reversed. He reminded evacuees that the storm is still 48 hours out, leaving plenty of time for motorists stuck in traffic to complete their escapes.

"We still have time to clean out these roads,'' he said.

People unable to escape low-lying areas in Houston on their own were urged to call the city's 311 hot line, and the mayor said 10,000 people have called. Throughout the night the city was sending buses to get them out, but people were still told they needed to count on family, friends and neighbors.

White reiterated that there is no safe place to stay in low-lying and flood-prone areas of the city, and there won't be shelters in the city.

"There will be no central place for people to go,'' White said.

Wilma Skinner would like to scream at city officials. If only someone would pick up their phone.

"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers,'' she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money.''

"All the banks are closed and I just got off work,'' said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people fretted in line. "This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don't have money? Answer me that?''

Some without cars could afford bus tickets but were still stuck. The crush of people seeking to get out of Hurricane Rita's path spurred Greyhound Bus Lines to halt ticket sales at its main Houston terminal today.

"Too many people are showing up,'' said company spokesman Eric Wesley in Dallas. "We want people to know that they shouldn't come to the terminal to buy a ticket. There's no more room on the buses.''

"Maybe we'll get a bus tomorrow," said Javier, who works as a security guard downtown. The two live in a flood-prone house along Broadway in southeast Houston and decided they needed to catch a bus anywhere inland.

"They shouldn't leave us out here in the sun like this," said Rubi Gonzalez, who carried her 1-year-old son. "Now I know how the people in New Orleans felt."

Those lucky enough to have plane tickets out of Houston encountered frustrations on a smaller order.

At Houston's two airports, scores of Transportation Security Administration luggage checkers failed to show up to work, creating snarls at baggage checkpoints even as anxious residents were lining up to fly out of Houston.

The problems with getting out of Houston airports were exacerbated by people showing up with no reservations trying to get on flights, and those with reservations packing enormous amounts of baggage that slowed the search process.

Hobby's parking lots quickly reached capacity, and Bush's lots were nearly full this afternoon. People sat on floors in the hallways; trash cans overflowed; gift shops and all but one restaurant were closed. Travelers waited in a nearly block-long line for food at the open Subway shop.

In Galveston, meanwhile, City Manager Steve LaBlanc estimated that 90 percent of the town's 57,000 residents have evacuated.

"This city is a ghost town right now," he said. "You could drive 80 mph down the sea wall."

Galveston called in five more school buses this morning to pick up stragglers.

Before boarding this morning, Galveston native Mike Johnson said his brother offered to take him out Tuesday but he dragged his feet.

"I know this going to be a bad one, but I wanted to wait and make sure."

Tommy Green, an evacuee from Louisiana, also boarded a bus to a Huntville shelter this morning.

After surviving two days on his rooftop in San Bernard Parish in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he has since moved to Dallas to Oklahoma to Galveston, where he has relatives.

"I just can't believe this happening again," he said.

It was also unsettling for some Galveston County inmates, close to completing their jail time, who were unexpectedly freed today. Among those trying to fend for themselves was a perplexed Peter Ennis, who had served all but a few days of his six-month sentence for drug possession.

"I guess I'm going to start walking,'' said Ennis, 32. "I'm going to walk over the causeway. My grandmother is going to meet me on the other side and we'll ride out the storm at the house in Santa Fe."

Nearly 100 miles up the road, far fewer have packed up to leave, but many Woodlands residents pulled out their saws and nails and began boarding up their homes.

Candido Benavides, who lived near the Gulf Coast for 23 years, just moved into his new home in the Harper's Landing neighborhood about a month ago and didn't want to take any chances.

"We just moved from League City. I know what things are like. I've experienced the high winds,'' said Benavides.

He said he stocked up on supplies, including plywood and water as he drove back home from Dallas, where he was attending a conference.

"I hit the Sam's. I hit the Wal-Mart and the Lowe's and Home Depot,'' he said.

Norman Buckley, who lives across the street, went to a nearby Lowe's to get plywood this morning and it was out of everything. Another shipment of plywood came in later, but the store rationed 10 sheets per customer, said Buckley, holding a circular saw and wearing protective goggles, ready to cut wood.

"I grew up in La Porte," he said. "I've been putting up shutters all my life."

Closer to downtown Houston, James York, a Vietnam veteran and self-described country boy, said he was going to stay in his Sunnyside home, too. He had some water, oil for a lamp, and of course plywood.

"It's a normal day for me," he said. "I'd rather be here in the safety of my own home.'"

York said his street has never flooded so he'd rather take his chances here. But he has said his prayers just in case.

"It's always a first time for something," he said. "I don't think people should live in fear."

Hours later, at 8:15 p.m. Corder was still in traffic, still trying to get home to Belton, which is near Austin.

Initially planning to take U.S. 290 to get here, she instead had to find another route when traffic on the West Loop became too congested. Her detour to the Westbound Katy Freeway was just as bad, she soon found out.

She'd passed the Highway 6 mark when she found out that the contraflow lanes - allowing westbound traffic on the eastbound lanes - had opened. But each time she tried to enter the contraflow lanes through what she thought was an entrance ramp, police stopped her.

One officer explained that she would have to backtrack to Highway 6, saying that was the designated access point to the contraflow lanes. And getting back to Highway 6 would take about three hours, the officer said.

That's because she would have to drive east on the access road, which was just as congested.